David Artell has told the club’s official website that his players deserved credit for playing some good football against Oxford United on Tuesday evening. A spirited Alex performance was punctured by Oxford’s scrappy winner after we failed to deal with a short corner from the visitors. Substitute Brown pounced on the opportunity to score the only goal of the game just after the hour mark.

Crewe had come close to opening the scoring themselves but Chris Long’s shot struck the underside of the crossbar and bounced away.

As the Alex now prepare for a trip to Cheltenham, Alex boss David Artell told us: “We haven’t been out of the games against Wigan or Oxford. We were in the game at Wigan until the last 10 minutes when they scored a deflected second goal and even then Chris Porter had a good chance to pull one back.

“We certainly weren’t out of the game in any way against Oxford on Tuesday and I felt we did enough to get something out of it. But we have to start winning games of football, we know that.

“I don’t think the dressing room would know it is seven defeats on the spin. We don’t let that type of pressure if you like, into the dressing room. Instead we focus on developing and getting better. And we have had two better performances against two of the best sides in the division.

“We gave a totally committed performance against Oxford and didn’t get the rub of the green on the night. We just lacked that quality or a bit of luck to score that goal. We have to get back to scoring goals and believe that when we do that will change our fortunes around.

He added: “These younger players are where they are on their journey and we have to keep on helping them because that is what we do here. I think if you asked any of the players they would tell you that we are trying to help them and all we ask is a committed performance and we got that on Tuesday. That is the foundation for any side and all we missed was that goal.”